The jihad against the textbooks

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One man's jihad can be another man's mission of
distortion. The Islamist terrorists who attacked America on
September 11 cited their murderous rampage as a "jihad."
The suicide bombers who set out to terrorize Israeli schools,
restaurants and malls call their mission their "jihad." But
American school kids might never know anything about that.

A lot has gone missing in our textbooks. "Patterns of
History," for example, published by Houghton Mifflin and
adopted as a world history textbook in high-school classes in
Texas and other states, never even mentions the word. A
seventh-grade world history book by Houghton Mifflin, titled
"Across the Centuries," defines "jihad" merely as a struggle
for a Muslim "to do one's best to resist temptation and
overcome evil." There's no mention of the fact that millions of
Muslims - not all, but many millions - are taught to regard
everything not under Muslim rule or control as "evil."

"Islam and the Textbooks," a 35-page report compiled
by the American Textbook Council in New York, analyzes
seven history textbooks widely used between the seventh and
12th grades and finds that millions of American
schoolchildren are being cheated of accurate history.
Politically correct advocacy groups have thoroughly
intimidated teachers, administrators and school boards -
and in a way that the most fundamentalist of Christians or the
most orthodox of Jews never could.

Textbooks are big money. Publishers cower at the
prospect of offending anyone with a megaphone, and the
advocacy groups are skilled at manipulating the timid and the
cowardly with easy accusations of "bigot" and "racist."
Uninformed and uncritical teachers pass on their own
ignorance with appeals to mushy sentiment disguised as
tolerance. Parents who think textbooks are written by fair but
tough-minded scholars are unaware of how political process,
not scholarship, produces their children's textbooks. There is
neither understanding nor recognition of the abuse of Islam by
radical Muslims and how they use this distortion to make war
on America - and indeed on the millions of peaceful
Muslims who do not share their distorted theology.

On significant Islam-related subjects, textbooks omit,
flatter, embellish and resort to happy talk, suspending
criticism or harsh judgments that would raise provocative or
even alarming questions, says Gilbert Sewall, a former
professor who heads the American Textbook Council
(www.historytextbooks.org/islam). You wouldn't even learn
how Islamists frequently describe jihad in military terms, using
passages from the Koran. Bernard Lewis, the author and
scholar, says that "the object of jihad is to bring the whole
world under Islamic law." You won't find this view, widely
shared by scholars, even acknowledged in the politically
correct texts.

There's no acknowledgment that religious dogma is
dictated by certain Islamic states, how freedom of religion
and speech are alien concepts in most Islamic countries.
Double standards are the norm in these textbooks; Judaism
and Christianity get short shrift, as do Western secular
institutions. Slavery is often presented as a peculiarly
European and American institution. One text does not even
mention that Islamic civilizations engaged in the slave trade. In
another, where slavery is acknowledged, it's treated as a
"benign institution" offering slaves the opportunity for "social
mobility."

Textbooks that robustly discuss the benighted condition
of women that once prevailed in the West present severe
contemporary restrictions on Islamic women as benign. "For
some women," one textbook states, "the [hijab, or veil]
symbolized resistance to unpopular governments." A "bridal
fair" of the Berbers in Morocco is portrayed as a quaint ritual
of happy natives enjoying the party, without noting that
fathers sell their daughters to their prospective husbands
through negotiations over dowries. Upper-class women may
be secluded in the home, but "in rural areas, peasant women
continued to contribute to the economy in many ways."
(Aren't they the lucky ones?)

The exceptional women in Islamic society who achieved
great knowledge and power, such as Shajar, a 13th-century
freed slave who is said to have become a ruler of Egypt, are
presented as typical. Maisuna, a Bedouin poetess, is
portrayed in one text as a proto-feminist (sort of like Gloria
Steinem in a burqa).

The Council on Islamic Education in Orange County,
Calif., is particularly intimidating to publishers. It has warned
scholars and public officials that those who do not see
eye-to-eye with its positions will be cited as racists,
reactionaries and enemies of Islam. High-profile (and easily
frightened) publishers and editors eagerly seek the council's
imprimatur.

The American Textbook Council says the distortions,
inaccuracies and omissions in the study of Islam are the result
of complacency, not anti-Americanism. But its report
suggests something worse than complacency is at work. It's
the cheating of our children - and the rest of us, too.